Forum Moderators: phranque
I'm not sure if this the best forum to ask this question on - so forgive me if it's the wrong place :-)
I'm the webmaster for a site which is trying to get visitors to register their interest in buying limited edition fine art prints. Those of us involved in this project have a very limited budget and did not want to begin expensive print production until and unless we knew we had a saleable product. I think that's where we've been going wrong! (More of which anon...)
We're getting reasonably good SE rankings and the site comes up high on all the major SE results pages for our chosen keywords and the access logs tell me we're getting better than 40 visits a day.
But no one is registering... :-(
My colleagues are of the opinion that it's the registration process which is putting visitors off. i.e. visitors could see this as an attempt to harvest email addresses, or cannot be bothered with a site that doesn't actually sell anything (yet).
We have pretty much decided to bite the bullet and risk the 6,000 odd Dollars it's going to cost us to produce products in the hope that those 40 visitors WILL buy if there's something to buy..
What's the forums' take on this and on the wisdom (or unwisdom) of asking people to register their interest in buying future products on line?
TIA,
Marc Behr
I take it that you don't have any prints ready for instant purchase? That would definitely start ringing alarm bells for me.
If, on the other hand, you had a reasonable selection available for immediate purchase, and were also offering advance purchase/registration of interest for coming prints, then I'd be more inclined to give you a go. I'd still be hesitant mind you, but if the site stacked up in every other respect, and you are actively selling already printed prints, then that indicates to me that you at least have the capability to follow through on the promise to print.
I'm in the middle/upper luxury gift market myself. We sell a few items that are made to order.... or I should say we have catalogs (online and off) for items that are made to order. Those that we SELL are without exception those that we already have similar stock available that the customer can see, touch, evaluate the quality of. Those artists who supply us a catalog without physical product, regardless of how lovely the work might be, don't sell squat.
I may not be following you correctly, so if I'm off the mark... just reply and I'll try again.
If you are surveying to see if a specific product has a market (or is viable to take on inventory) then it is best to make this process anonymous. By making visitors register in advance of product availability then you are saying to these visitors "opt-in so we can contact you", by way of harvesting some form of contact information.
You really can't say your not (in this case).
If you actually go ahead and take a "leap of faith" then no one needs to register since the purchaser will definitely want you to have their contact information.
Private information is private, and also very valuable, so the enticement to register (or opted-in) must be of equal or greater value otherwise your campaign is a lost leader.
Targeting the right market is also very important, if for example your search results are bringing in visitors on "free limited edition art prints" then these visitors will likely register but only if the prints are free.
A few alternatives - (in advance of your "leap of faith" to risk manage ROI) create a newsletter (for registering), or a white paper for purchasing limited edition art prints online (for registering), or do the survey for product viability (anonymously).
Find a few forums, directories, non-profit orgainzations in artwork for reciprocal linking to increase and get highly qualified visitors (possible add a small commission/donation) for the linkage/traffic.
Target past customers via their emails/phone they bought before and obviously something else.
I'm sure other member will have some ideas.
Regardless, it is generally unwise to to move forward with any product unless you are reasonably certain there is a market.
Let us know how things turn out and your chosen solutions.
<added - I had a client that did that "leap of faith" thing, $20,000 investment / outcome - 92% loss on investment, and because the product was time sensitive - they never recovered the loss.
"It was gonna be BIG though".
Consequently we've decided to bite the bullet and start production.
Those of you are are interested in seeing the site are welcome to have a look at:
[light-of-egypt.co.uk....]
It should at least demonstate that we're above board and a serious "legitimate business" - to quote "Txbakers" comment.
To address your specific comments...
"Deejay" made a very good point with: "If, on the other hand, you had a reasonable selection available for immediate purchase, and were also offering advance purchase/registration of interest for coming prints, then I'd be more inclined to give you a go" We only have 6 paintings that we can print at present. I'm not at all sure if that constitutes a "reasonable selection"! We hope to have 6 more within the next 3 months ( in time for Christmas) so I guess it might make sense to ask visitors to register their interest in buying those, and from what you say they would be more inclined to do so once we have the initial 6 ready for sale?
"Deejay" also wrote: "Those artists who supply us a catalog without physical product, regardless of how lovely the work might be, don't sell squat." Not quite what I wanted to hear but then the truth usually hurts. Thanks for telling it like it is.
I'm most grateful to "fathom" for his (her?) comments. If we were looking at the sort of investment you mentioned ($20,000) we would have done/be doing a lot of serious traditional Market research along the lines you suggest.
But ours is a very small, niche venture which requires minimal investment. The most any of us can lose is about $3,000, which is less than the stock market plunge has just wiped off my pension fund.
I agree with "Buckworks" that "40 visitors a day is not a large pool of prospects". However, we only launched at the end of June, and we _ARE_ in a niche market (as you'll see if you visit the site). We are trying to get a lot more incoming links but it's a time-consuming and slow process. Once we have the ecommerce up and running we intend to give both Overture and Google's adwords a spin for a month or so. In addition, we're printing a brochure to use in a targeted mailshot and one of the people involved in the project has links to the publishing industry so we hope to get some leads that way too.
Our primary objective is not to make a pile of money. It's hard to explain on a forum, but basically we're interested in furthering the work of a very talented group of Artists who are producing something quite unique and original, which, so far as we're aware, does not exist anywhere in the world - and certainly not on the Net. So we have that in our favour!
As "Buckworks" suggests, we are indeed "doing things on a smallish scale at first", taking it one step at a time. Later, if we can cover our costs - and that's all we're aiming for at this early stage - we hope to expand the product range very considerably.
I hope that's given you all some more background and thanks again for all the help and advice,
Best wishes,
Marc Behr.
